First off, for clarity I received this for review from the lovely Maggie of healthcabin fame.
As you may know I’m a predominant mtl vape fan and mostly squonk but I do occasionally dip my toe into the big boy toys and drop the ohms which is where this rda is aimed.
As with all the digiflavor stuff I’ve received of late, the packaging is excellent. A lift top box opens to present the Drop rda (this one’s in stainless) and also a plastic cap for those hotter builds complete with beauty ring. Quite a bonus as these seem to be being sold as after market items lately. They are presented side by side in a velour fitted panel. Behind the panel is some coils, spare o’rings, tools and an extensive manual.
The Drop Solo has been designed by The Vaporchronicals who I believe is a YouTube reviewer.
This rda definitely stands out from the crowd in its deck design. It’s a 22mm rda but due to the way the posts have been designed it offers what seems like acres of space for your coil.
This clearly has been designed with a slant towards the squonk fan although it’s absolutely fine for the drip fan too ( it comes with both regular and bf squonk pin).
As I usually find a 2.5mm flat nichrome coil suits 22mm squonk rta’s best to my taste, that’s where I started.
As you may notice from the photo. The coil was lost in that deck.
I will add it’s incredibly easy to coil this rda. You can either use the supplied coil as a template or make the coil and space it on your coil bar until the legs fit the posts.
Remember to cut your coil legs about 15mm long before fitting so you don’t bottom out on the deck. You can then trim the excess. The coil posts come supplied with flat head grub screws. Get rid, and replace them with the hex grub screws that are supplied as spares with the corresponding hex key in the pack.
This is obviously a single coil set up,, unless you want to get creative.
The deck is good and deep and the squonk pin sits a little proud (my preferred scenario) so you can lay your cotton on the deck a bit and get quite a bit of vaping between squonks or drips.
Once you’ve clamped your coil you bend it 45% (see pic) and this places your coil dead centre of the rda.
Anyway as I had the coil in so I thought I’d crack on.
The airflow choices on this rda are huge and very well designed.
You get 10 small airflow holes on each side of the rda that are in the shape of a T. You can rotate the top lid of the top cap and open each individual airflow hole from bottom to top.
This allows you to have a few holes open bellow your coil for flavour builds or open it right up for clouds.
Opening and closing the airflow is super smooth and the actual airflow on this thing is probably the quietest and smoothest of any rda I’ve used.
Back to the testing. Silky smooth airflow aside, flavour was a tad bland.
I rebuilt with a 3mm flatwire coil (0.4) ohms so not too low.
40w with the airflow half open gave an excellent vape. Good flavour and huge clouds.
I ramped things up with a stainless flapton 3mm build (this little deck could actually take a 3.5mm coil) around 0.3ohms. And boom we’re in flavour country. Dripworx og shake tasted top notch and I filled the room with clouds. The drip tip is clear plastic and the top never got too hot.
Moral being. This rda likes big low ohm high wattage builds.
Using the supplied additional plastic cap you where able to achieve greater flavour with the smaller coils as the airflow is slightly differently designed but has the same great adjustment mechanism.
Now thoughts. I honestly feel with the standard cap the Drop Solo shines brightest on a regulated squonker/mod but with the plastic cap it’s perfect for a little mech device.
Flavour wise it’s nowhere near as easy to find the flavour sweet spot as on say the tobhino or hadaly but the airflow is a world better. Don’t get me wrong the flavour is there, it just makes you work for it. Plus you won’t get a death stare from you significant other for sounding like Darth Vader with asthma.
This actually makes me think of a single coil version of the goon.
If I where a pure cloud chaser this would get a 10/10 but I personally like flavour at reasonable wattages so for me it’s a 6/10.
You can get yourself a drop solo from the good folks at healthcabin for under £25. Plus I’ve had zero customs issue’s with them.
